Book review: Joanna's Story and others

This book has three stories, so I will do areview of each one. The first story is about a young girl called Joanna that was anorexic during her adolescence. The second story is about a young boy called Ricardo that has problems with acohol. And the third one is about a girl called Anne that has anxiety caused by parents in the middle of a divorce.


 Joanna's story
The protagonist of this story is called Joanna.She was never happy with her physical appereance and she was always comparing her with her best friend called Clare. She always felt short and dumpy compared to her and she was really ashamed. But the problems come with the new boyfriend of Clare. Joanna was jelaous of her because her best friend had a boyfriend  and she hadn't. For distaction, Joanna started to fantasise with her english teacher: Mr McCarthy. Her best friend Clare was always saying her that she had to forget about him. Finally, she forgot him and she started to have fellings to one of their classmates called Nick. They both started a relationship but it finished a few time later because Nick made that her inferiority complex about her body even worse. From this moment, Joanna didn't want to eat to lose a little bit of weight but it became a problem. She lose so much weight because she didn't eat almost anything and she started to have anorexia. Her parents were so worried about her so they took her to a hospital to cure her from her illness. At the end, she got over from the anorexia and now she realise how dangerous her illness was.


A part of the story that I personally like is:


" [...] I think if you're forced to change completely when you're still quite young, you discover things that you wouldn't normally discover until much later. I can see my limitations. Or at least the ones I've discovered so far! And I'm very conscious of them. [...] I'm particularly looking forward to meeting new people and to living on my own. I'll be in control, but this time it will be something positive, because now I know how to make it that way."




Ricardo's story
The protagonist of this story is a young boy called Ricardo. Ricardo was a boy that studied a lot and was very organised with the school. He and his best friend Pablo left their school and went to another one, where they met a group of tough-looking boys. They got on well with them so they started to go out every night for driking without limits. Pablo was more responsible than Ricardo, who always returned home the next day in the morning. Ricardo's parents were so worried about their son, but he didn't tell them anything about him and his new friends. One day, Ricardo's parents went to a trip. Raul, that was one of his new friends, told him about using his parents' car and he accepted although he was very drunk. The next day, he woke up in a hospital and he didn't know what had happened to him. A nurse that was with him told him all that happened. The last night he had a accident with the car and a friend of him, called Pablo, was badly hurt. In this moment, he called Pablo who was in a hospital room next to him but he didn't want to talk with him; but finally they made up and Ricardo realised that what he was doing was not good at all.


A part of the story that I personally like is:


"Pablo, I understand that you're very angry with me and that you don't want to be my friend any more. I just want to say again that I'm very, very sorry about what has happened. You're right. I've got a serious problem. I want you to know that I've called Alcoholics Anonymous. My first meeting with them is tomorrow evening. Well, that's all that I have to say. It's just ... I'm sorry. I was an idiot."


Anne's story
The protagonist of this story is a young girl called Anne. She wrote a diary to express her anxiety caused by parents in the middle of a divorce. She had a little sister and she was always suffering because of her. Due to the divorce of her parents, she could not  concentrate  with her studies so he failed all the subjects except history. At first, she was all day worried and sad because of the arguments of her mum and dad but finally, when they got divorced, they realised that many people had divorced parents and it was quite common and she realised too how difficult it's to be with one person for the whole for your existence.


A part from the story that I personally like is:


"I've been looking over the last year and what I've written here. It's 11 months since I became aware of all these problems between Mum and Dad. I feel like a different person now. I'm surprised at how secure I feel. [...] There are many people at college with divorced parents. I hadn't realised just how common divorce is. Or just how difficult it is to be with one person for the whole of your existence. [...] Time for everyone to get on with life. And time to write to Roman. I hope you don't mind, Diary, but I've got someone else to write to now! "


I have chosen these parts of the stories because they show us the "moral" of the stories. In these parragraphs, the three protagonists of the stories realised of what is the real situation i their lives and what things they have done wrong. It helps us, the readers, to reflect about the problems that exists in the present, because the context of these stories is in the present so it helps us to realise that this type of problems or illnesses can affect to everyone of our society.